PART TWO
MESOPOTAMIA
ADAM OPENED HIS eyes from an afternoon nap and saw that from his own body, here in the sunshine of Mesopotamia, God had created his helpmeet. The place where she had been joined to his chest was a raw wound between her shoulder blades. He himself was as intact as ever. Her buttocks were warm, sweaty, against his loins, and he drew back from her. His member was as beautifully relaxed as that of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
As her own life awoke in her, she began to stir. Adam looked around quickly to see if he might have a daylight glimpse of God himself retreating from his handiwork, perhaps stepping into the deep shadows of a grove of trees. Always, always before now, God had come to Eden in the cool of the evening, in the hushed mystery of dying light, when dusk veiled vision. But the God of his childhood, for whom Adam still longed, had been a forthright god of sunshine, or rain, and diurnal weather. That God of childhood had wanted the brightness of noonday about him—that pinnacle in time when equality spread out on all sides, and objects tucked their shadows under themselves as securely as hens sat on their nests.
But here she was, even if God was gone. She was not young. She was not thin. Her skin lacked the luster of freshness; gray, sometimes a thread of bright silver, was to be found among the dark brown hair of her head. Her face? Because she lay on her side with her (mostly) dark hair splashing across her cheek, he could only study her profile. Ordinary: a straight nose, a smallish chin but a rather nice jawline. Could she have been the age of his mother? Probably so, if his mother had mated young. And this woman was marred, or at least hurt. Not only was there the raw patch between her shoulder blades, big as the palm of his hand, but also, he saw now, on the back of her head, another ugly, raw patch, the size of his thumb and forefinger brought together in a circle. Her hair was burned off to the scalp, charred black like the remains of a campfire. Around the bad spot her hair was frizzled, broken, and burned. She was damaged; God had left damaged goods on his doorstep.
But then, too, so was he.
And had he ever known a single person whom life had left undamaged?
Didn’t we all deserve each other and nothing better? Suddenly he wanted to draw her, the char circle like a crown slipped down the back of her head.
How had Michelangelo rendered Eve on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? God had brought Eve, looking frightened, behind him, enfolded in a flare of his blue robe. Had God’s fiery hand touched this Eve’s reluctant back, shoved her toward Adam?
A garter of sand encircled both her legs just above the calves. Sparkles in the yellow grit glinted in the light, ornamental and pretty. Perhaps she had risen from an older mythology—Venus rising from the sea, marked with rings of sand around her legs.
Adam licked one finger, reached down, and pressed the finger against her sandy skin. Numerous grains stuck to his wet finger, and he brought them to his lips, his finger like an offered Popsicle. He licked once, felt the discrete graininess of it, and glanced into her now open eyes.
“Eve?” he asked. To say her name, his voice turned into liquid velvet and poured from his mouth.
First her eyes answered, with a twinkle, claiming consciousness. Then she asked, “Are you Adam?” and good humor twinkled also in her voice.
“Yes,” he answered. His breath clotted, suspended in his mouth.
“My name is Lucy,” she replied.
“No,” he said. He shook his head slightly in the negative. Not Eve? He closed his eyes for a moment and felt something like shame cross his face.
“I’m hurt,” she said gently, with just an edge of urgency.
He opened his eyes, noted that hers were midnight blue, and said, “I saw. You’ve been burned. Purified. As by a Refiner’s fire.”
“My plane crashed. On the beach.”
“An airplane.”
“Yes. An antique Piper Cub. Why are you here?”
“God put me here.”
Some idea passed over her face. She sat up, turned her body, and faced him now as they continued to sit under the apple tree. Soft globules of light spotted the grass.
He could not have deduced her countenance from her profile. Her face had a wideness to it, an openness across the eyes. She was not afraid. Her gaze softened as though she had seen someone familiar, someone she recognized and accepted.
“Why did God put you here?” she asked.
“To try again.”
She nodded and was silent for a while. Finally she said, “We have no clothing.”
“No,” he answered. It was a pleasure to look at her. “That’s how it was, in the beginning.” Her open face, especially her eyes looking right into his eyes, was—yes—a pleasure to see. Perhaps if she wore clothing, she would not look at him so tenderly. He wanted to touch the curve of her cheek, to fit his hand just there, to cradle her face. He wanted to care for her.
“There are flowers here, in this paradise.” Her voice was full of hesitation. “And fruit. Flowers I knew as a child. Almost exactly like them.”
He found himself saying, “I know,” though he didn’t know. He felt confused. When had she been a child? He, too, could remember, both far back and recent harsh realities. His captivity and rape in a truck. To reel forward more quickly, he closed his eyes: the kindly monkey-boy. His head began to throb. With the hand that would have caressed her soft cheek, he covered his face.
“The back of my head got hurt,” he said like a child. Was not Eve the mother of us all?
“Mine, too.” She reached out and stroked the nape of his neck. “Feel better,” she said quietly. When he stretched his hand toward her, she quickly added, “Please don’t touch me.” She withdrew her own hand.
He stopped and bowed his head, reprimanded, quietly sad. He glanced at her body as she sat in the sunshine: breasts neither large nor small, a pleasant pearish shape, a little rounded sag of belly fat around her middle. Her private hair was concealed by the fullness of her thigh and the way her arm crossed her body.
“I’m thirsty and weak,” she said. “Very weak. My burns hurt.”
“I know an aloe plant,” he said, looking into the distance. “At the ranch, my mother put aloe juice on burns.” When the burned woman did not reply, he continued, “You should be in the shade. It was shady here when I fell asleep, but you know the shade moves.” He stood up and felt he was rising successfully from a pool of sadness. “I’ll get the aloe and bring you some fruit. What do you like best?”
“Oranges and pears, if they’re ripe,” she said without hesitation.
“And cherries?”
Unperturbed, she was looking at his nakedness, his height.
He knew how he looked—sculptural and strong—but it meant nothing.
“Thank you,” she said simply.